Tales of Old Gotham
by fireandice722
Summary: Medieval AU. King Thomas and Queen Martha ruled righteously, but one of their knights betrayed them, and Bruce will stop at nothing to rid the corruption in the kingdom that took his family from him. Told in a similar way to Arthurian Legends. Rated M to be safe.


Once upon time, there was a kingdom, and its name was Gotham. The city prospered in commerce and trade, but it wasn't always this way. See, the denizens of the kingdom were filled with hate and greed, the epitome of human savagery. One would even dare to say Gotham brought out the worst in the best of men, but Thomas and Martha were the ones who reformed Gotham, and saved it for a short time.

King Thomas hailed from the notorious house of Wayne, a line of kings who either ruled over Gotham as corrupt despots or turned their eyes away from the crime in their land in exchange for wealth. Thomas knew that he would never dare be like his ancestors; when he was to inherit the crown, Thomas knew he would be a righteous king, not a cruel tyrant or subservient panderer like those who preceded him.

Martha Arkham came from a family of jailers, men and women who saw the dishonor in Gothamites, and they knew that these criminals deserved to be punished. Thus they created the Arkham Dungeons, a catacomb of prisons to torment the few criminals who were foolish enough to be caught by Gotham's intentionally naïve knights.

With shared interests in the preservation of their home, Thomas and Martha married in a harmonious union, as Thomas inherited the throne. King and Queen Wayne instated new knights, warriors honor bound to the safety of Gotham's innocent, and the Arkham Dungeons were inhabited by more and more of Gotham's scum. Needless to say, the King and Queen were loved by their subjects, but despised by crime lords even more so.

The safety of Thomas and Martha was of utmost importance, and they were always guarded by watchmen, but no one could have expected it when they were killed in their sleep by one of their own knights. No one knew what to do, they knew not who committed the murder, and the house of Wayne was survived by young Bruce, a boy barely half a decade of age, and thus unfit to rule. One knight, a man from the Cobblepot clan, arose to claim the throne, and he exiled Bruce, who he saw as a threat to his new acquired place at the throne. Oswald, as many knew, was power hungry, and no good was to come of this, and indeed King Oswald incorporated once more the cruel criminal system, and once more was the kingdom a hive of villainy.

Now, when he heard of young Wayne's exile, a man by the name of Alfred Pennyworth, a retired knight and one of few who wasn't corrupt in Gotham's history, adopted Bruce and raised him in the abandoned Old Wayne Castle, a ways away from Gotham, to keep him from Cobblepot. As he grew older, Bruce learned more of what his parents' mission was from Pennyworth, and how Cobblepot seized the throne and ruined what the Waynes had dedicated their lives to building. Bruce knew he would fight crime and corruption, starting with Cobblepot, and thus vowed to return to Gotham to take Cobblepot's life.

Upon this vow, young Wayne trained under the Demon's Head after journeying to a distant assassin's temple known as Nanda Parbat. The mighty Ra's al Ghul trained him in every known form of combat, with blade and bow, fist and spear, and Bruce still pushed to learn more, until his fighting prowess challenged that of Ra's himself. A master of stealth, Wayne was dubbed _Midrab_ —the Bat; creature in the night, a silent, untouchable force. And so _Midrab_ returned to Gotham to fulfill the vow he had made—to kill King Oswald.

In a suit and a bat-horned helmet, both forged of Nanda Parbat's mystic black steel, Wayne returned to Gotham upon his trusty steed, a black stallion by the name of Ace, hiding his face while he campaigned through Gotham, toppling many small crime groups while homing in on the castle he was born in, ready to confront Cobblepot, and causing many to question, "Who could this Bat-Man possibly be?"

To his credit, Wayne allowed himself to believe that his home would be above scandalous and immoral activity, but he was erroneous in this assumption. He stopped killers, thieves, rapists—various criminals and low-life scum, their sickened blood upon his hands. Henceforth, he decided there was no way that Oswald could live. A man who permitted such atrocities to run free from justice should never be a king.

As Wayne came upon the castle in Gotham's heart, King Oswald took notice, and the King feared for what the Bat-Man would do to him. He sent his best half-dozen men to confront the Dark Knight in the royal courtyard, but to no avail. Wayne slew them with ease, as he had chosen to stage his assault in the cover of night. Thus _Midrab_ partook in his hunt in the unforgiving darkness, and blood was spilled. His black steel sword was unseen by the corrupted knights, and barely felt as their lives were taken quickly, mercifully. The same would not be said for Oswald.

So the Bat-Man marched through the castle, and those who wished to shield the king from him were also slain without hesitation. As he ascended the tower, and at the door of the King's chamber, Bruce felt an unexplainable feeling within his heart, a demanding vengeance upon the man who ruined his family legacy. Upon breaking down the door, Wayne came to face the twisted king himself.

King Oswald was less intimidating than young Wayne expected. Cobblepot was a portly man of diminutive stature, but his eyes were more crazed than any of the criminals Wayne had killed on his crusade to the throne. "Now cometh the Knight," Cobblepot said, not afraid in the slightest. "Or should I say young Bruce."

Wayne was shocked by the unveiling of his identity, but nonetheless drew his blade. "You ruined the righteous kingdom my mother and father worked hard to create," Bruce said.

"I showed mercy to you, but you dare to return to question my throne? Perhaps to kill you as well would have been a preferable choice," Cobblepot said.

"You are the one who killed my mother and my father," young Bruce said, unsurprised. "Tonight their souls are avenged through your spilt blood."

Cobblebot didn't fear _Midrab_ ; in fact, the tyrant held out his arms, as if to embrace the blade of his foe. "Strike me down," Oswald told young Wayne. "Prove to me that you are no better than me."

It was with no hesitation that _Midrab_ drove the black steel blade through the chest of the welcoming king, and with a scream of agony, the King fell to Wayne's feet, a cruel leader dead, but Wayne took no satisfaction in this. With greaves soaked in the pool of Cobblepot's blood, Wayne swore never to take a life, ever again.

The following morning, he would accept his rightful coronation, claiming the throne of Wayne, and none questioned that he would preside as a righteous king, and indeed he did. Wayne instated his own inner circle of knights, but he knew that he wouldn't live with himself without knowing he dealt with the kingdom's crime without.

And so the Bat-Man would command from his throne by day, but by night he would seek out his prey to bring them to the Arkham Dungeons. Ever the superstitious lot, the scum and villainy of the kingdom called him the Dark Knight, an avenger in the night, and Wayne fed off of that fear as the symbol of the bane of injustice, for the crime that had been Gotham's ruination would always live.

* * *

Please review if you want me to write more!


End file.
